05 June 2012

Alda Merini: There But For Fortune

"Hours wasted in vain
in the asylum gardens,
Back and forth along the walls
made fierce with flowers,
All of us lost in a fleeting
dream of reality,
Which some cleric
tossed behind our backs.
And after meeting
some patients smile
at the fake friendliness.
Time wasted in whirling thoughts,
hedged in behind the bars,
liked naked swallows.
Then we listened to the sermons,
we multiplied the fishes,
Down near the Jordan,
but Christ was not there:
He had uprooted us from the world,
Like dreadful weeds."- Near the Jordan by Alda Merini, tranlsated from the Italian by Stephanie H. Jed & Pasquale Verdicchio.

If you don't read Italian your chances of stumbling on the poems of Alda Merini are slight. Merini (1931-2009) lived most of her life in her native Milan. She showed a talent for poetry at an early age and, in spite of enormous internal turmoil, she eventually published more than one hundred volumes. In photographs we see her wavy brown hair and the cigarette in her hand . She had the additional misfortune - if you want to call it that - to be nominated for the Nobel Literature Prize in 1996, the same year as the Polish poet, Wislawa Szymborska, who won the prize.

Merini's thoughts never skated over the surface of life like a water beetle. Near the Jordan is an exemplary poem of Merini's, holding opposing ideas in balance - or at bay - in an unsteady state. Between the altered states of incarceration and freedom she lived with a double consciousness, experienced at times as a gift, at other times as a burden. If this seems dark, Merini's poetry also conveys a light ouch. I like to think of Merini's aphorisms when I think of the ponderousness of church fathers.

"I am completely
Asexual
Not counting
Errors and omissions." - from Six Aphorisms, 1999, Alda Merini, translated from the Italian by Douglas Basford.

I Am A Furious Little Bee by Alda Merini, translated from the Italian by Carla Billitteri, Oaklamd, Hooke Press: 2008.

Love Lessons by Alda Merini, translated from the Italian by Susan Stewart, Princeton, Princeton University Press: 2009. You may also be interested in:The War of Nerves: Peter Altenberg & Emily Holmes Coleman, posted here November 3, 2011

All the Planets in Heaven, All the Stars: Gaspara Stampa, posted here August 28, 2010.

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Why The Blue Lantern ?

A blue-shaded lamp served as the starboard light for writer Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette's imaginary journeys after she became too frail to leave her bedroom at the Palais Royale. Her invitation, extended to all, was "Regarde!" Look, see, wonder, accept, live.

"I think of myself as being in a line of work that goes back about twenty-five thousand years. My job has been finding the cave and holding the torch. Somebody has to be around to hold the flaming branch, and make sure there are enough pigments." - Calvin Tompkins